Compromises
by Antigone's Sister
Summary: Canada is a country built on compromises.  He doesn't know if this is a good thing or not.
1. Chapter 1

Don't own any Hetalia characters that pop up.

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><p>Dom Agoya and Taignoagny agreed to be spirited away in the strange man's splendid canoe to France, as long as they were allowed to return the following summer with white man's goods to trade.<p>

That winter in Stadacona the wing howls around the longhouses harshly, much as is always does. But some of the women in his tribe, who have been mothers and might be expected to recognise such things better than others, insist they can hear the crying of a newborn child swept along with the ice and snow.

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><p>1st meeting between France and Canada, and Jaques Cartier kidnaps the chief's sons. Good start.<p> 


	2. 1 La NouvelleFrance

Do not own.

This entire thing is rather in need of editing, but who knows when I'll get around to it, and if I wait I think I'll lose my nerve.

1. La Nouvelle-France

Québec wanders into the fort, small limbs frozen stiff, confused. He can't remember what he was doing outside, only knows that now he desperately wants to be inside this place glowing softly in the night, murmuring with the voices of men he somehow knows well, though he's never seen them before. He toddles past half-empty tables in a dimly lit room. No one seems to notice him. No one wonders what a child is doing in a trading fort, an obviously European child with his pale, pale skin, his brown, tangly hair. He wonders if he could snatch anything off of the men's plates, if they might notice him then, and scold him. He is eyeing some lumpy brown thing that nevertheless still manages to look appetising when his feet suddenly part company with the ground.

"Mais qu'es-ce que tu fais içi?" he hears, the voice coming from somewhere above him. He looks up, squinting a little. A man is smiling at him as if he already knows the answer, and it pleases him to no end.

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><p>Québec loves this man who has taken him in, given him food and clothes and a warm, warm bed. They hunt together, fish together, make bullets and maintain guns and fix up any part of the fort that seems a little worn down.<p>

One summer, when he is old enough, France brings him to Paris to see the marvels of Europe: its art, its history, its music and culture and pomp and grandeur. Québec has been looking forward to this trip since France first told him where he was from, that very first winter they spent together.

He hates every minute.

The nobles at court mock him, or worse, try to study _le sauvage_. They seem surprised at his good French (he knows nothing but the dialect used at court, which his people use as a common tongue between all their vastly different versions), but they call him _païen_ behind his back, and sometimes to his face, no matter how he explains he is a good catholic, with Jesuits and the sisters at the hospital in Mont Réal. The food is nothing like what France makes for him at home – hearty, often plain fare that is simple and uncomplicated. The food in Paris is ornate, requiring ridiculous effort to make _and_ eat. Worse, it appears that France can barely stand what they eat at home, only lowering himself to eat it because in the New World it's either that or starve. Québec remembers how France enjoyed the pea soup with brown bread he surprised him by making all by himself one day, and wonders what other lies he's been told.

But the worst thing is the heat.

Québec doesn't understand why Europeans wear so many clothes – so much more than his mother's people back home – when their weather is so much less suited for it. His chemise, underneath his doublet, is soaked through, and his skirts cling to his legs (France says he is not old enough for breeches). He was sick on the voyage over, and France held him and comforted him. The first trip is always hard, he had said. When you are older the ocean will not make you sick. But even after arriving in France, Québec finds he can't shake the nausea, the exhaustion. He longs for ice fields, for cool waters. Not even his summers are like this, and his heat spells, such as they are, are brief and easily endured.

After a week or so in Europe, France takes him down to bathe in the river to cool him down. His fever has done nothing but rise since they got to Paris. Québec feels better for a few hours, but throws up again in the night. Eventually, France starts losing patience with his illness. Québec is left alone in the _Palais-Royal_ and wishes he could simply melt away. In early august, France puts him on a ship bound for Québec city. He doesn't throw up so much this time – apparently France was right, you do get used to it – and spends most of his time reading the bible the Jesuits gave him.

When they dock, he avoids the captain and the rest of the crew and simply dives overboard, swimming downstream a little and washing up near a farm. He works for the _seigneur_ until late November when a frantic France finds him and brings him back to the city.

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><p>After that, things start happening quickly. Québec's brother, l'Acadie, stumbles into his house one day. He is covered in blood, soaked with fresh seawater from a sea that is miles away. Québec hadn't seen him for years, not since <em>l'Angleterre<em> took him away, but he had thought that he was alright under English rule. L'Acadie can't stop crying, saying he is being emptied out, torn apart. He says he is burning. As Québec watches, he grows fainter, then transparent.

"What is happening?" he asks. "Where are you going?"

"English colonies," l'Acadie manages to gasp out. "Only parts. Others to France. Some of me ran to you. England didn't want. But I did anyway. Want to help you. France. England coming here."

"He won't," says Québec. He's tried before, him and that boy that follows him around, and France has beat him off every time. But l'Acadie is shaking his head.

As it happens, l'Acadie was right. Only a few years later Montcalm is dying and Québec runs to Montréal, but that is taken as well. L'Acadie floats behind him wherever he goes, ghostly voice fainter every day. Québec thanks God for small favours when England finds him hiding under an overturned canoe, and cannot see his dead brother.

Québec spends four years under English rule waiting for either France to rescue him or the war to end, when he'll be traded back like Louisbourg was. He tried getting rid of England on his own, but failed, and decided to wait for his big brother instead.

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><p>America can't see l'Acadie's ghost either, but Québec finds his brother in the tilt of America's eyebrows, in the way he runs down a flight of stairs. It's for this reason that he tolerates America's poking and kicking under the dinner table, the way he'll lock Québec's room at night so he can't escape from England's house, the way he tries to teach Québec English and lure him away from the Church. America is a Protestant, condemned to burn in Hell. Québec covers his ears and prays France comes soon, before America forces too much change on him. Too much English on him.<p>

One day England comes home and tells them that he's signed a treaty, and the war is over. Québec is so happy he could cry, and asks when France is coming to get him.

England blinks, then explains. France had a choice. Guadeloupe interested him much more. England had tried to give him back, he says earnestly, honestly, and God knows he wanted to, but unfortunately France thought beaver hats were passé, and now that it was obvious that he had no gold like Spain's colonies...well.

Québec is still for a long time, staring at England. America asks how far he'll be able to expand northwards and westwards now. And as soon as England's eyes are off him, he runs out the back door, out of the house and runs and runs and runs.


End file.
